When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States's first Black president. Great Expectations is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions-questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood, all of which force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
One of the smartest and most involving American political novels I’ve read in ages ... Such cool, elegant ambivalence is everywhere in Great Expectations, even when one wishes, as it nears the finish line of Election Day, that the mood would intensify. In time Mr. Cunningham will want to cultivate a dramatic killer instinct. But for now this book’s grace and insight are more than enough to make it a wonderfully promising first novel.
Despite the novel’s steady drip of astute observations about Obama and his groundbreaking campaign, the excellent view David gives us is relentlessly introspective ... The result is a coming-of-age story that not only captures the soul of America but also feels the unquenchable thirst for meaning which passeth all understanding.
Vividly rendered ... [A] heady tension of aspiration, charisma, optimism, unbelievable timing and intellectual curiosity as well as a yearning for connection ... Cunningham takes a cinematic, fast-paced story and infuses it with the texture of humanity.
